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Chocolate and Beetroot?

There are two things in life I don’t like. We all know the first one is change. The second, is fruit…in savoury recipes. The whole concept of mixing something sweet like fruit with meat or savoury food baffles me.

It really does.

I’m such a foodie, I can’t think of anything better than food. But putting something sweet and meaty together for example, just makes me angry. I just can’t understand it. Nor do I understand the need to mix them together. Who thought that apple in a sauce would compliment pork? Or that pineapple would sit nicely on top of a pizza with ham? Or even chocolate and cheese? CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE?! (Excuse me while I throw up)

Having said that however…(this is the moment where I do a 180 and apologise)…

I did taste a chocolate and beetroot cake and LOVED IT. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to like it but I couldn’t help it. It was weird. It was refreshing and it was lovely. SO, putting all my fears and hypocrisy behind me, I decided to make it for my partner’s birthday cake because he’s into that kind of weird food stuff (a world I’m slowly entering into with some resistance). I made it a couple of days ago and wanted to share the recipe in case others out there need converting too. It was so easy to make:

Ingredients:

175g plain flour

10g baking powder

200g dark chocolate

1tsp cocoa powder/hot chocolate powder

200g unsalted butter

200g beetroot

3 eggs

225g muscavado sugar

And for the ganache: 200g dark chocolate and 250ml double cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C / gas mark 6.

2. Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.

3. Sift the flour, and mix with baking powder, cocoa powder and butter into a bowl.

4. Fold into the eggs and sugar.

5. Melt chocolate (and 10g of butter if you wish) in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Once melted and slightly cooled, mix into the flour and egg mixture.

6. Blend the beetroot then fold into mixture.

7. Once all mixed, pour into cake tin and place in the middle of the oven for 30-40 minutes.

8. Meanwhile, make the ganache. Put the double cream into the glass bowl over the saucepan of hot water and break the chocolate into pieces into the cream, slowly mixing together.

9. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool. You don’t have to do this but I like to carefully split the cake in half and pour a generous layer of ganache on the bottom half. Then place the top half over the bottom half.

10. Then cover the cake with the chocolate ganache and decorate even more generously with anything you like.

In this case, we decorated the cake with M&Ms, or should I say HE decorated his cake with M&Ms. Et voila…

Hello, I'm Annie.
London born and bred to a set of Irish and Cypriot parents.
Award-winning blogger, squirrel-looking individual and film fanatic, I make a living as a journalist, and can often be found nose-deep in a Stephen King novel. Welcome to my little corner of the world.

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WINNER of the Most Innovative Blog Award at the National Blog Awards 2014